注意捕获与自上而下的加工过程

注意捕获对揭示两种控制过程——自下而上的加工与自上而下的加工之间的关系有着重要的研究意义。在当前对注意捕获的研究中,主要存在两大类的实验范式：线索化范式与视觉搜索范式;涉及以下几个方面：刺激驱动的注意捕获与自上而下控制的关系;注意捕获是否涉及注意的空间转移;刺激的显著性对注意捕获的影响;实验范式对注意捕获的影响。总的来说,没有任何一种视觉刺激能绝对的独立于自上而下的控制之外来捕获注意,因此也可以这样认为,注意捕获被默认为是一种自动化的过程,但这个自动化的过程可以被内源性的调节所抑制或者易化。     

Retrospective self-reports of therapist flexibility in a manual-based treatment for youths with anxiety disorders

Evaluated retrospective therapist ratings of the flexibility used when applying the procedures and strategies prescribed in the treatment manual. Flexibility ratings were collected from 18 therapists who had treated 148 children with anxiety disorders (ages 9 through 13). Analyses revealed strong reliabilities for a flexibility questionnaire and that flexibility was used by therapists; however, significant relations between therapist-rated flexibility and treatment outcome were not found. Discussion focuses on the role of flexibility in manual-based psychological treatments and future directions for study.     

Selective reinforcement of schizophrenics' interview responses

In this experiment each of five examiners tested and interviewed four subjects in each of three conditions. The subjects were 60 male, hospitalized schizophrenics. The three conditions were the reinforcement, after an operant period, of “sick talk”, “healthy talk”, or plural nouns during a structured interview. Half the Welsh factor A and R scale items were administered before the interview, half after the interview. Significant differences were found among experimental conditions in terms of changes from operant to reinforced interview periods in percentage of “sick talk” emitted by subjects and changes from pre- to post-testing in terms of Welsh R scores. The correlation between these two measures of change was statistically significant. The results were discussed in terms of the different therapeutic strategies of neoanalytic and behaviour therapists.     

The stimulus prefix is not irrelevant and is redundant in different ways

The present study examined the stimulus prefix effect of immediate recall under conditions in which the prefix element was defined explicitly as being an irrelevant item that should be ignored, or, alternatively, as an item to be remembered and recalled. Memory was poorer in the latter case. Also examined were the effects of three types of redundancy relation between the prefix and target elements; one of these, interstring redundancy (same prefix precedes each target string), was found to improve recall in a relative sense, and another, conceptual redundancy (prefix and target items belong to the same conceptual category), was found to degrade it. Thus, that part of the conventional stimulus prefix effect attributable to redundancy, per se, can be viewed as a composite of at least two opposing factors. Finally, the independent variables of the present study were interpreted to impose different information-processing requirements on the subject, and an account of these requirements was offered.     

Aphasia for Morse code

The ability to communicate by Morse code at high speed has, to our knowledge, not been localized within the cerebral cortex, but might be suspected as residing within the left (dominant) hemisphere. We report a case of a 54-year-old male who suffered a left temporal tip intracerebral hematoma and who temporarily lost his ability to communicate in Morse code, but who was minimally aphasic.     

Coping With Stress: A Workshop Framework

The work of the Open University's Coping With Crisis Research and Training Group¹ in running workshops on the theme of coping with stress² is described. A theoretical model of stress and coping is offered, and the structure within which the workshops take place is outlined. The framework described has developed over a period of four years, and is an account not of a finished product but of a continually evolving series of practices.     

Order and serial position effects in response time with multiple-item probe recognition

We examined the order effect in item-recognition response time, that is, differences in response time for multiple-item probes containing items in the same or in the reverse order as those in the memory set. Experiment 1 used the response condition in which only one item must be positive for a positive response, Experiment 2 used homogeneous probes in which all the items are either positive or negative, and Experiment 3 used the condition in which all the items must be positive. Of particular interest were the serial position variations in order effects for probes containing items that were adjacent in the memory set. We previously found that such effects are an indication of subjective grouping of the memory set and the matching of the probe with these subgroups. The order effect in the one-positive condition was only weak in most cases, but it was strong with homogeneous probes when the memory set was objectively grouped or was ungrouped but with a constant set size. There were also strong order effects in the all-positive condition for probes with items that were nonadjacent in the memory set. Our results are interpreted in terms of a parallel match process based on a distribution over position of items in subjective or objective groups. We account for the origin of the distribution-over-position process in terms of multiple representations of the grouped memory sets. The model assumes that each subgroup is represented in memory several, and perhaps very many, times and that considerable error in item positioning can occur over the multiple representations of any group.     

ON IAN HARBOUR'S ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract. Although Ian Barbour endorses process organicism in Issues in Science and Religion , his rhetoric against vitalism and dualism makes his discussion of life, mind, and the part-whole relationship sound like relational emergentism and hence like a denial of process philosophy's nondualistic interactionism. Also his rhetoric against a God of the gaps seems to exclude the God-shaped hole in Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy. A more consistent articulation of Whitehead's postmodern position would lead to greater adequacy and consistency on these issues, and perhaps also to a more radically postmodern view of science—a view which Whitehead himself only sometimes suggested.     

Authoritarianism Research is Alive And Well—In Australia: A Review

After the work of Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford was published in 1950 much research into authoritarianism was done. The return on the effort deployed, however, was disappointing and the topic is now a relatively minor one in psychology. Three Australian researchers, however, have continued with extensive programs of research in the area—Ray, Rigby, and Heaven. Some broad view is therefore given of the major themes in the work of each of these researchers. It is pointed out that all three researchers have produced new scales to measure various conceptions of authoritarianism that have some potential to reinvigorate research in this area. Some unexpected discoveries are also mentioned.